Failure modes and effect analysis is a tool to identify potential failures and prioritize based on severity, occurrence, and detection. I like to describe FMEA as an organized brainstorm. You probably have some experience with FMEA.
In some industries, there is a high expectation or mandate to do an FMEA study. In some industries FMEA maybe just another tool to consider using during various stages of the product or asset lifecycle.
In my opinion, FMEA should be a part of your project plan when it is likely to add value.
Value in the sense that the organization will receive an adequate benefit based on the investment to conduct the FMEA study.
It’s required
If you are in a situation where FMEA is a customer or contract requirement, you still may or may not need to actually conduct an FMEA. I mean a study where you and your team actually participate and benefit from the work. I’ve seen organizations simply outsource the FMEA study to a third party or to an individual to fill out the form.
The customer receives a copy as proof that the study was accomplished. In one organization the design and manufacturing team knew the study was being done by a third party simply to meet the requirements of the contract. Most never saw the report and those that did review it found it of little value, other than the customer agreed the requirement was met.
What a waste of time and money.
In some cases, even when an FMEA is required, it may be useful for the team. But how do you know if it’s worth the investment?
We only find what we already know
FMEA, when done by a team, may result in a list of potential failures that are already known.
It is possible the team does not reveal anything new. Nothing new other than a little bit of added discussion around each issue is not a good use of time.
The members of the study bring with them what they know about the product and the potential failure modes. Most engineers inherently consider the weaknesses and attempt to design or work to minimize the failures.
If the team already has methods to communicate and share the potential failure modes and priorities, then conducting an FMEA is merely a repeat of other work.
When does FMEA make sense?
One of the best FMEA’s I’ve seen was for a bottling machine. This machine is large and capable of positioning and filling 200 bottles per minute, including capping the bottle. The team was to focus on potential improvements to improve the equipment availability. It is a complex piece of equipment.
The team included equipment operators, maintenance technicians, manufacturing engineers, quality engineers and equipment vendor engineers. The team structure included people that didn’t normally get the chance to discuss the operation of the equipment. The operators with their first-hand knowledge of the problems helps the rest of the team understand the nature of failures. The vendor engineers helped everyone know the possibilities and limitations of the design intent. The entire group contributed and learned from each other’s point of view.
While everyone brought in what they already knew, not everyone knew what everyone else did. The resulting set of action items actually made a difference and significant improvement to the equipment’s operation. Yet, not any one group would have been able to achieve as much. The value stemmed from the sharing and understanding of the issues from many voices.
In this case, for a complex piece of equipment and assembling a team from operators to vendors enabled the group to make a difference.
Communicate with your team
In general, an FMEA is a tool to help your team communicate with each other. If that is already occurring, FMEA may not be the right activity. If different parts of the organization are working to locally optimize solutions or no one group understands all aspects of the equipment, then FMEA make sense.
Another case to consider FMEA is when the potential failures are not well know. It may be a new material, process, or design, which the team has little prior experience. Then the brainstorm elements of the FMEA may reveal areas that need exploration and understanding. The ‘what if’ discussion provides a means to consider areas previously not explored. The process then expands the team’s awareness of potential failure modes, thus improving the team’s ability to detect the issues when they occur.
FMEA provides value when it guides the subsequent product testing by highlighting areas to monitor.
Without that insight, we may not include specific measurements or detection capability to determine if the potential issues occur or not. Without the awareness, we would miss the chance to detect real problems.
Summary
FMEA is a good tool. It has a long history and many successes. When done well and when the potential for value exists then conducting an FMEA study make sense. If done just to check of a requirements box or when little uncertainty about potential failure exist, then spend your team’s time focused on other tasks.
The key is when the study will help share insights and knowledge to reveal and prioritize potential failures. FMEA has value in building consensus and awareness when connected to other actives like product testing or improvement experimentation.
Think about and choose to do or not do FMEA based on your specific situation.
A limitation of the standard Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) and Failure Modes, Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) procedures is that neither identifies the product failure mechanisms and models in the analysis and reporting process. Investigation of the possible failure modes and mechanisms of the product aids in developing failure-free and reliable designs. A design team must be aware of the possible failure mechanisms to design hardware capable of withstanding loads without failing. Failure mechanisms and their related physical models are also important for planning tests and screens to audit nominal design and manufacturing specifications, as well as the level of defects introduced by excessive variability in manufacturing and material parameters. Without information on failure mechanisms, FMEA may not provide a meaningful input to critical procedures such as virtual qualification, root cause analysis, accelerated test programs, and to remaining life assessment. Another potential shortcoming of the standard FMEA is that the use of environmental and operating conditions information is not made at a quantitative level
Failure mechanisms are the processes by which physical, electrical, chemical and mechanical stresses induce failure. Knowledge of the failure mechanisms that cause product failure is essential to design and qualify reliable products. FMEA and FMECA procedures do not identify the product failure mechanisms and models, which limits their applicability to provide a meaningful input to critical procedures such as virtual qualification, root cause analysis, accelerated test programs, and to remaining life assessment.
Failure Modes, Mechanisms and Effects Analysis (FMMEA) enhances the value of FMEA and FMECA by identifying high priority failure mechanisms and failure models. High priority failure mechanisms determine the operational stresses, and the environmental and operational parameters that need to be controlled. Models for the failure mechanisms help in the design and development of a reliable product.
Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering (CALCE) has developed the FMMEA process and helped several organizations implement the tool in their product development process